1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a movable contact body employed for an operating panel of various electronic equipment, and to a panel switch using the movable contact body.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A conventional movable contact body for a panel switch is described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,924,555. The movable contact body comprises a separator, a plurality of dome-like movable contacts disposed on the separator in predetermined locations, and a resilient film coating the upper surfaces of the dome-like movable contacts.
The separator is made of paper or other insulative film to prevent the corrosion of the dome-like movable contacts by the gases in air or the sticking of foreign matter thereto. The dome-like movable contacts are made of resilient and conductive material. The resilient film coats on the dome-like movable contacts, and employs an adhesive agent on its lower surface. The separator is bonded to the lower surface of the resilient film through the adhesive agent, thus closes openings of the movable contacts. A conductive film is printed on an upper surface of the resilient film.
When the movable contact body is used in the panel switch, the separator is removed. The movable contact body is deposed on a substrate sheet. The substrate sheet has a plurality of central fixed contacts and periphery fixed contacts correspondingly surrounding the central fixed contact. The dome-like movable contacts are disposed corresponding to the fixed contacts, of which an apex of the dome-like movable contact corresponds to one of the central fixed contact and a periphery portion of the dome-like movable contact corresponds to the periphery fixed contact.
Though the invention works well, there is some problem it can not solve. The movable contact body employs the separator, the plurality of movable contacts, the resilient film and the conductive film to achieve the object of the invention. As the conductive film is combined with the resilient film by an additional printing process, which may increases the cost and the step of processing.
Hence, an improved movable contact body is required to overcome the disadvantages of the prior art.